Émile Chatelain (25 November 1851 – 26 November 1933) was a French

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

ist and

palaeographer Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic discipline of historical writing systems. It encompasses the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dati ...

Biography

A member of the

École française de Rome The École française de Rome (EFR) is a French research institute for history, archaeology, and the social sciences; overseen by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and a division of the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et ...

(1876–1877), collaborator of Henri Denifle for the ''Chartularium'', curator of the Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, whose catalogs of manuscripts and ''incunabula'' he wrote, and study director at the

École Pratique des Hautes Études École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

, Émile Chatelain was elected a member of the

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres The () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the . The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions (epigraphy) and historical literature (see Belles-lettres). History ...

in 1903. He was behind the reissue of the French-Latin dictionary by Quicherat and Daveluy. Holder of the chair of paleography at the École Pratique des Hautes Études from its origins, he became interested in manuscripts of the late antiquity and the early Middle Ages and especially the best represented writing, the

Uncial script Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...

and the

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...

s. Under the influence of one of his listeners, Paul Legendre, he devoted considerable research to the use of

Tironian notes Tironian notes () are a form of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of shorthand (Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after Marcus Tullius Tiro, Tiro, a personal secretary to Marcus Tullius Cicero, wh ...

.Denis Muzerelle, « Un siècle de paléographie latine en France », dans Armando Petrucci et Alessandro Pratesi, ''Un Secolo di paleografia e diplomatica (1887-1986), per il centenario dell’Istituto di paleografia dell’Università di Roma'', Roma, Gela, 1988, (p. 131–158), at page 136 The archaeologist and epigrapher Louis Chatelain was his son.

Main works

His work includes two masterly series of facsimiles:
''Paléographie des classiques latins''
Paris, 1884-1887 ;
''Introduction à la lecture des notes tironiennes''
Paris, 1900, XVI-234 pages; * ''Les palimpsestes latines'', "Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études", 1904, (p. 5–44); * ''Uncialis scriptura codicum Latinorum''... Paris, 1901–1922.

References

External links

Notice sur la vie et les travaux de M. Émile Chatelain
on Persée
''Mélanges offerts à M. Émile Chatelain''
on Archive.org {{DEFAULTSORT:Chatelain, Emile Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Academic staff of the École pratique des hautes études French Latinists French palaeographers French writers in Latin People from Montrouge 1851 births 1933 deaths